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Elon Musk's social media network X has sparked significant backlash after users employed its artificial intelligence assistant Grok to manipulate photos of females by removing their garments.

Numerous cases have surfaced where the tool has been employed to remove clothing from women to render them in swimwear without permission, as well as to place them in inappropriate situations.

Developer Response and Legal Position

XAI, the organization behind Grok, did not respond to questions, except for an standard response stating "legacy media lies".

A Home Office official stated that legislation is being proposed to prohibit nudification technology. Under a new criminal offence, anyone who provided such technology would "be subject to a jail term and substantial penalties".

"X or Grok could prevent these types of abuse if they desired to," said a law professor, adding they "operate with impunity."

Regulator Position and Tool Capabilities

The regulator Ofcom said technology companies must "assess the risk" of people accessing illegal content on their services, but stopped short of confirming whether it was at this time looking into X or Grok in regarding AI-generated pictures.

Grok is a free AI assistant—with some premium features—which reacts to X users' requests when they mention it in a post.

It is frequently used to give commentary or further context to other users' remarks, but people on X are also capable of modify an uploaded photo through its artificial intelligence picture modification feature.

Background of Criticism and Rules

The chatbot has been faulted for allowing users to create photos and footage with nudity and sexualised material, and it was previously accused of making graphic content of celebrities.

"The platform has been enabling the production and sharing of these images for a long time without taking any steps and we have not seen any intervention by oversight bodies," the expert added.

XAI's own usage rules bans "showing images of persons in a graphic manner".

In a statement, Ofcom said it was illegal to "create or distribute non-consensual intimate images or child sexual abuse material" and stated this included explicit AI images generated with AI.

It said networks such as X were required to take "suitable steps" to "minimize the danger" of users coming across illegal material on their platforms and to delete it swiftly when they become aware of it.